Regular yard maintenance is needed to keep weeds, grass, and vegetation within desired parameters. Existing methods of trimming, cutting, or mowing weeds, grass, and vegetation often require an operator to be in direct contact with a mower, trimmer, or cutting machine or apparatus. As a result, the terrain must be relatively flat and smooth to allow the operator to safely walk behind, push, or ride the mower. Unfortunately, the terrain of a yard does not always stay within prescribed operational limits so additional tools are often needed to safely complete the yard maintenance whenever the terrain becomes too steep in slope or if irregular surface conditions exist such as bumps, rocks, ditches, and the like. A variety of different yard maintenance tools and devices may be used to access these areas with adverse terrain, such as a boom type weed whacker, trimmer, or brush cutter type tool.
In these adverse conditions, the operator of these tools is physically subjected to any number of harsh conditions. For example, boom type trimmers often need to be carried by the operator, which will place additional stress on the neck, back, shoulders, hands, wrists, legs, and ankles of the operator. Some yard maintenance devices even subject an operator to unnatural vibrations and exhaust fumes. Moreover, the nature of these yard maintenance devices requires that the operator wear protective clothing to shield from flying debris. But even standard protective gear cannot always protect the operator from unexpected environmental dangers accidentally uncovered by the normal operation of the device. For example, a trimmer may inadvertently encounter a ground level bee's nest or accidentally cause the release of a concentrated pollen cloud. Both situations would immediately subject an operator holding the yard maintenance device to a potentially life threatening environment, which is even further complicated if the operator is working on adverse terrain where footing may be unreliable.